fixed skills

Excerpt from the book To Sell is Human by Daniel H. Pink

There is a significant change in the way we do business. When organizations were highly segmented, skills tended to be fixed. If you were an accountant, you did accounting. You didn't have to worry about much outside your domain because other people specialized in those areas. The same was true when business conditions were stable and predictable. You knew at the beginning of a given quarter, or even a given year, about how much and what kind of accounting you'd need to do. However, in the last decade, the circumstances that gave rise to fixed skills have disappeared.

A decade of intense competition has forced most organizations to transform from segmented to flat (or at least, flatter). They do the same, if not greater, amounts of work than before - but they do it with fewer people who are doing more, and more varied, things. 

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Well, I kept wondering for a while after joining the large organization on the scope of work I do or any person who joins any random large organization does. Each and every job has been narrowed down to do one particular activity and people don't tend to move or think beyond the same. Where as in the flatter organizations, people do things that requires their ability to think beyond what they are supposed to do. There is no elasticity in the larger organizations or more specifically the segmented organizations. In smaller organizations, everyone does multi-tasking and will be selling themselves every moment in the process of completing the job or growing the organization.

So,I guess size of the company is inversely proportional to the scope of your job?! 

Srik

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